Mr. Romney said, “I’m not concerned about the very poor

On Wednesday morning in an interview with CNN, Mr. Romney said, “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” a comment that has ricocheted around the Web and cable news channels.

I guess the very poor are something less than American....

USA: Millionaires would pay a minimum 30 percent effective tax or their fair share!!!

Millionaires would pay a minimum 30 percent effective tax rate under a law introduced on Wednesday in the Senate with the backing of President Barack Obama and named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

Nicknamed the "Buffett Rule," the tax bill reflects President Obama's view of the unfairness he says is represented by Buffett's tax anomaly - that Buffett pays a lower effective rate than his secretary does.

The "Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012," introduced by Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, has almost no chance of passage this year as the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has sworn off tax increases.

Revenue generated from the tax has yet to be officially calculated, but Whitehouse said it could raise $40 billion to $50 billion a year.

In October, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, introduced the American Jobs Act, which included a first version of the Buffett rule as a 5.6 percent surtax on millionaires. It never came to a vote.

About 94,500 taxpayers, a quarter of all U.S. millionaires, pay a lower tax rate than the bulk of middle-income taxpayers, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Buffett makes a living off investments, which are taxed at 15 percent for capital gains and qualified dividends. Buffett's secretary earns a salary and is taxed in wage-income tax brackets that range from 10 percent to 35 percent.

The tax fairness issue flared last month when Republican Mitt Romney, one of the wealthiest men ever to run for president, and his wife Ann came under pressure to release their tax returns.

Documents released last week showed they paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent in 2010 and expect to pay a 15.4 percent effective tax rate when they file their returns for 2011.

President Obama in his State of the Union address last week when he called for the 30 percent minimum tax. Buffett's secretary, Debbie Bosanek, attended the speech as a guest of first lady Michelle Obama.

Obama is building an America for the 99% v Romney who is building it for the 1% = that's the choice

Drawing ever-clearer lines between himself and his leading Republican challenger, President Obama on Wednesday promoted a new proposal to help burdened homeowners, casting it as an alternative to those who contend that the nation’s housing market must bottom out before homeowners can expect relief.

The person who made that bottoming-out argument? Mitt Romney, whose strong victory in the Florida primary on Tuesday reinforced the belief of Mr. Obama’s advisors that he will be the Republican nominee.

“It is wrong for anybody to suggest that the only option for struggling, responsible homeowners is to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom,” Mr. Obama said to applause at a community center here. “I refuse to accept that, and so do the American people.”

Housing values in this affluent suburb of Washington have plummeted by a quarter, the president said. More than half of all homeowners in Las Vegas, he added, were underwater on their mortgages, meaning that what they owe is more than their house is worth.

In October, Mr. Romney told the editorial board of the Las Vegas Journal-Review that he believed the housing market needed to bottom out. Nevada, which will hold its Republican presidential caucuses on Saturday, has been hit harder by foreclosures than any other state.

The housing market gave the president an opening to hammer his theme of economic fairness for the middle class, which he said had been victimized by unscrupulous banks and mortgage brokers.

“This housing crisis struck right at the heart of what it means to be middle class in America: our homes,” he said. “The places where we invest our nest eggs, places where we raise our family, places where we plant roots in our communities, the places where we build memories.”

“We need to do everything in our power to repair the damage and make responsible families whole again,” Mr. Obama told an enthusiastic crowd of about 400 in a gymnasium.

The housing plan, parts of which require Congressional legislation, aims to make it easier for homeowners to refinance their mortgages, by streamlining the financing process and clearing the way for people with underwater mortgages to obtain new mortgages.

Visiting the Washington Auto Show on Tuesday, Mr. Obama inspected new hybrid vehicles from Ford, Dodge and General Motors, and reminded spectators of his administration’s role in bailing out two of the Big Three carmakers.

“It’s good to remember the fact that there were some folks who were willing to let this industry die,” the president declared. “Because of folks coming together, we are now back in a place where we can compete with any car company in the world.”

And who was it who argued that the government ought to let the carmakers fail? Mitt Romney.

Wall Street for President; I mean Mitt Romney.....is that Government by, for and with the PEOPLE???

Mitt Romney’s investment background, criticized by some of his Republican presidential rivals, is helping him build a financial advantage over them.

In the fourth quarter of last year, eight of the 10 biggest donors to Romney, co-founder of Boston-based Bain Capital LLC, a private-equity firm, worked for banks and investment funds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg based on U.S. Federal Election Commission information released yesterday. Citigroup Inc. (C) employees gave $196,600. Those at JPMorgan Chase & Co. donated $180,518, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) workers contributed $106,580.

For the whole campaign, Goldman Sachs employees and their families have been the largest source of campaign cash for Romney, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group that tracks political money.

“Wall Street supports someone they consider one of their own and the candidate perceived to be the most committed to promoting policies they prefer,” said Costas Panagopoulos, director of the Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy atFordham University in New York.

Russia refuses to Condemn Syria with the rest of the UN Security Council

The battle over Syria moved to the United Nations on Tuesday with Western powers and much of the Arab world confronting Russia and its allies in the Security Council over their refusal to condemn the Syrian government for its violent suppression of popular protests.

As top diplomats gathered in the Council chamber for the showdown, the drumbeat of violence continued without pause in Syria, where government forces used heavy weapons and tanks to push rebels back from strongholds near Damascus. 

At the United Nations, the two sides skirmished over a draft Security Council resolution proposed by Morocco that calls for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to leave power as the first step of a transition toward democracy. 

But behind all the arguments lurked the ghost of Libya, with Russia determined to block any resolution that might be construed as a license for regime change. The Arabs and top Western diplomats argued that endorsing the demonstrators was the minimum step required to support popular demands for change that began with peaceful demonstrations and have evolved into an increasingly armed uprising. 

“The Syrian government failed to make any serious effort to cooperate with us,” Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, the prime minister of Qatar, told the Security Council about Arab League efforts to mediate the dispute. “The government killing machine continues effectively unabated.” 

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, joined by the foreign ministers of Britain, France and several other countries, argued that Libya was a “false analogy.” The plan for a gradual democratic transition “represents the best efforts of Syria’s neighbors to chart a way forward, and it deserves a chance to work,” she said.

The proposed resolution, which most likely would not be voted on before Friday, called for Mr. Assad to cede power to his vice president, who would help form a unity government that would prepare for elections. It is unlikely that Mr. Assad would heed the demands to step down, even if the resolution made it through the Council.

House & Senate wish to remain above the law on insider trading = read the not so fine print.

WASHINGTON — In an effort to regain public trust, the Senate voted Monday to take up a bill that would prohibit members of Congress from trading stocks and other securities on the basis of confidential information they receive as lawmakers. 

The vote was 93 to 2. 

Senators of both parties said the bill was desperately needed at a time when the public approval rating of Congress had sunk below 15 percent. 

“The American public has no confidence in Congress,” said Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, who introduced an earlier version of the legislation. 

At the same time, Democratic senators moved to tap into concerns about comparatively low tax rates paid by some of the nation’s top earners, introducing a bill that would require households with more than $1 million of adjusted gross income to pay at least 30 percent of it in taxes. 

A handful of lawmakers have tried for years to enact restrictions on stock dealing by members of Congress. But their efforts drew little support until new attention on the practice last year — coupled with election anxiety — prompted a flood of backing for the idea and support from President Obama in his State of the Union address. 

The bill states that members and employees of Congress are not exempt from the federal law and regulations that ban insider trading. 

“No member of Congress and no employee of Congress shall use any nonpublic information derived from the individual’s position as a member of Congress or employee of Congress, or gained from performance of the individual’s duties, for personal benefit,” the bill says. 

Federal securities law does not explicitly exempt members of Congress, but experts disagree on whether and when lawmakers may be found to have violated the law. The bill is meant to eliminate any ambiguity.

It says that lawmakers have “a duty arising from a relationship of trust and confidence” to Congress, the federal government and the citizens of the United States — a duty they violate by trading on nonpublic information. 

The bill also requires members of Congress to disclose the purchase or sale of stocks, bonds, commodities futures and other forms of securities within 30 days of transactions. The information would be posted on the Web in a searchable format. 

In his speech last week, Mr. Obama urged Congress to act, citing what he called “the corrosive influence of money in politics.” 

“Send me a bill that bans insider trading by members of Congress,” Mr. Obama said. “I will sign it.”

The Senate was already writing such a bill. 

However, the bill does not subject lawmakers to a second type of restriction suggested by Mr. Obama, who said Congress should “limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact.”

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's suggests G20 should let the aging and sick die of their illnesses v being provided healthcare....Think Hitler had a similar policy...

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's warned it may downgrade "a number of highly rated" Group of 20 countries as of 2015 if their governments fail to enact reforms to curb rising health-care spending and other costs related to aging populations.

Developed nations in Europe, as well as Japan and the United States, are likely to suffer the largest deterioration in their public finances in the next four decades as aging populations strain social safety nets, S&P said in a report published on Monday.

"Steadily rising health-care spending will pull heavily on public purse strings in the coming decades," S&P analyst Marko Mrsnik wrote in the report. "If governments do not change their social protection systems, they will likely become unsustainable."

If no reforms are adopted, health-care-related credit downgrades would likely start within three years, eventually leading to an increase in the number of junk-rated countries as of 2020, the study showed.
Health care will likely be the fastest-growing expenditure for developed countries, which already have high social protections and rapidly worsening demographic profiles. For example, Japan's population is expected to decline by 30 percent by 2060, with two out of every five people turning 65 or older, according to official data.